It is a prevailing theoretical claim that path integration is the primary means of developing global spatial representations. However, this claim is at odds with reported difficulty to develop global spatial representations of a multiscale environment using path integration. The current study tested a new hypothesis that locally similar but…

Joint attention--the mutual focus of 2 individuals on an item--speeds detection and discrimination of target information. However, what happens to that information beyond the initial perceptual episode? To fully comprehend and engage with our immediate environment also requires working memory (WM), which integrates information from second to…

Inversion effect in biological motion perception has been recently attributed to an innate sensitivity of the visual system to the gravity-dependent dynamic of the motion. However, the specific cues that determine the inversion effect in naïve subjects were never investigated. In the present study, we have assessed the contribution of the local…

The aim of the experiments was to investigate how manipulating the contrast of the signal and noise dots in a random dot kinematogram (RDK), influenced on motion coherence thresholds in adults with dyslexia. In the first of two experiments, coherent motion thresholds were measured when the contrasts of the signal and noise dots in an RDK were…

White (2012) proposed that kinematic features in a visual percept are matched to stored representations containing information regarding forces (based on prior haptic experience) and that information in the matched, stored representations regarding forces is then incorporated into visual perception. Although some elements of White's (2012) account…

We live in a dynamic environment in which objects change location over time. To maintain stable object representations the visual system must determine how newly sampled information relates to existing object representations, the "correspondence problem". Spatiotemporal information is clearly an important factor that the visual system takes into…

The human visual system is extremely sensitive to biological signals around us. In the current study, we demonstrate that biological motion walking direction can induce robust reflexive attentional orienting. Following a brief presentation of a central point-light walker walking towards either the left or right direction, observers' performance…

This study aimed to explore the recognition of emotional and non-emotional biological movements in children with severe and profound deafness. Twenty-four deaf children, together with 24 control children matched on mental age and 24 control children matched on chronological age, were asked to identify a person's actions, subjective states,…

Testing sensory characteristics on herpetological species has been difficult due to a range of properties related to physiology, responsiveness, performance ability, and the type of reinforcer used. Using the Jacky lizard as a model, we outline a successfully established procedure in which to test the visual sensitivity to motion characteristics.…

The importance of kinematics in emotion perception from body movement has been widely demonstrated. Evidence also suggests that the perception of biological motion relies to some extent on information about spatial and spatiotemporal form, yet the contribution of such form-related cues to emotion perception remains unclear. This study reports, for…

Walking without vision results in veering, an inability to maintain a straight path that has important consequences for blind pedestrians. In this study, the authors addressed whether the source of veering in the absence of visual and auditory feedback is better attributed to errors in perceptual encoding or undetected motor error. Three…

In a series of five experiments, we investigated whether visual tracking mechanisms utilize prediction when recovering multiple reappearing objects. When all objects abruptly disappeared and reappeared mid-trajectory, it was found that (a) subjects tracked better when objects reappeared at their loci of disappearance than when they reappeared in…

Figure/ground assignment--determining which part of the visual image is foreground and which background--is a critical step in early visual analysis, upon which much later processing depends. Previous research on the assignment of figure and ground to opposing sides of a contour has almost exclusively involved static geometric factors--such as…

Human observers demonstrate impressive visual sensitivity to human movement. What defines this sensitivity? If motor experience influences the visual analysis of action, then observers should be most sensitive to their own movements. If view-dependent visual experience determines visual sensitivity to human movement, then observers should be most…

Previous research has demonstrated that compensatory movements for changes in visuomotor coupling often are not consciously detected. But what factors affect the conscious detection of such changes? This issue was addressed in 4 experiments. Participants carried out a drawing task in which the relative velocity between the actual movement and its…